To thine own self be true

“We are such stuff/As dreams are made on.”–William Shakespeare, The Tempest

We all live in and for dreams. When we are young, we dream of growing up and doing all kinds of wonderful things. As children, we dream of birthdays, Christmases, and special days like Halloween or Easter, and all the pleasant treats and gifts associated with such positive occasions. As Shakespeare suggested, we are pretty much hard-wired to dream and lead dream-like lives.

Think of the many who dream of the details of imagined weddings, marriages and families that signify perfect fulfillments of various imagined kinds of love. Think of the many who dream of physical accomplishments and doing heroic deeds to fulfill their talents and dreams of proving themselves or helping others. For, regardless of how brief dreams last or how disillusioned dreamers may become, they, more often than not, hold fast to a firm belief in dream`s potentials and possibilities.

“I dream, therefore I become.”–Cheryl Renee Grossman

“Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live
in dreams?”–Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Higher Pantheism’

In fact, we spend much of our lives in dreams whether asleep or awake. Dreams are what motivate, drive, and sustain us whether we are planning a special trip, choosing a home, or buying lottery tickets. Our dreams keep us going, hoping, and believing that our lives will someday acquire more meaning, purpose or fulfillment. Usually, too, they are far more interesting than what passes for often humdrum or limited/limiting reality.

It is not uncommon either for us to kid ourselves about how realistic and practical we are as we chase the given dream of the moment or day. But what is it that makes life worthwhile if not the possibilities of dream? Nowhere is that more obvious, perhaps, except in relationships. Seen a certain way, relationships are nothing more than mutual/ly/shared dreams, values, and interests.

Imagine two separate people who share an interest in a long list of things: dogs, walking in nature, travel to interesting places, books and reading, music and painting, writing and creativity, good food and conversation, and certain attitudes toward life and its possibilities. Is it not likely that what they may need, miss, want, or potentially benefit from is nothing more than the dream of living and loving the same way with someone else?

In such cases where there is mutuality and sharing of dreams in the form of a couple or a relationship, there is great potential to satisfy, perhaps, the deepest needs of mind, heart, soul, as well as the physical. Indeed, when dreams mesh and are actualized or realized, it can be said that dreams really can and do sometimes come true. Certainly, those relationships, which were once based on mutual and shared dreams of the life and the world, often come to an end when those dreams no longer overlap or `breathe` in any tangible, proven way.

Dreams, then, nibble deeply away at and inform our lives in the proof of living. At their best, we may be lucky to live in them and reality simultaneously. And perhaps some of the most fascinating experiences are those delightful, magical ones in which we cannot clearly separate one from the other.

“I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.”–Chuang Tse

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One more prose exploration of dreams, more focusedly, on dreams and relationships. I will let this one speak for itself without further examples and illustrations.

The “movement” had degenerated into spontaneous assaults and the occasional flare-up in the city core. At the time I was living in a high rise with a friend, having moved downtown from the country.

One afternoon we were looking out across the street at the office tower, which was heavily glassed-in on the bottom floor, when a fight broke out on the sidewalk. A fashion store display window got smashed as the violence moved down the street. “Let’s go down to see what’s happening,” I said to my friend.

When we got to the scene, we were swept into the tower by the milling crowd and ended up jammed into the lobby. Two beleaguered policeman in blue shirts with no apparent weapons held the crowd at bay. “No one’s going anywhere,”they ordered. But just then, some individuals in the crowd pushed into the adjoining walkway which led to the inner mall.

I seized the moment to run into the fashion store and the display window area, which had a glass revolving door that spun beside the window that had been broken in the earlier scuffle. The door had been aligned with the broken part of the window to keep people on the street side from entering the store. I pushed on the door, it spun open and I fell onto the glass still on the pavement below outside. Then I picked myself up and merged quickly in the crowd outside. The policeman, who had followed me once he realized I had escaped the throng inside, looked out of the broken window, then gave up the chase.

For some time after, I stood in the safety of the crowd still gathering outside the tower, watching what would happen next. For what seemed days, the remaining imprisoned crowd inside was controlled by added guards, who made sure that none of them got away. In the meantime, my friend’s health had suddenly worsened and he was kept in a bed on the second floor. He had been too slow to respond when I told him to come with me when I had made my escape, but I was determined to spring him now.

I don’t quite remember how I infiltrated the captured group of innocent spectators, but when I got to his bedside, I told him to follow me. Again, I went through the revolving-door window, which still hadn’t been repaired, with him this time. We returned safely to the building across the street, went up in that tower, then looked down below as in the beginning. A small river now curled in the street away from our building down the street due west for several blocks as far as the eye could see.

Down the river floated a number of rafts. On the first distinguishable raft, I saw a gaunt, bony-looking man wearing a black three-pointed colonial hat. Beyond that, an agitated crowd of humanity clung for life to another raft, far off, closer to the horizon.

On the film that was the scene I had been watching, I took a marking pen and imperfectly scrawled in red words below each of the two previous images: “the original American dream”, then “the new American dream”. The millionaire businessman-government official who controlled the city came and stood beside me, and smiled his gloated agreement with the first image and its caption. “Yes, that’s me. That’s who I really am. Does it get any better than that?” he asked rhetorically.

But he became clearly upset as I tried to scratch the second caption onto the same unfolding piece of film which also held the second image. His hand tried to interfere with my writing hand as I struggled to finish recording the caption. To his embarrassed dismay,  I persevered until–at last–I had finished my writing…

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As I said earlier, our dreams measure our relative success and failures. The same holds true within the dream logic of night sleep. These struggles, no matter how odd or obscure, define us ultimately–who we are, what matters to us, and the roles we are called on to perform, sometimes 24/7! (I am a writer and am fated to express whatever personal visions or social truths that ‘write themselves’.)

(after Gustav Klimt’s painting)

On the bed, he holds her neck,
her hand all the while on his,
the golden fabric of tryst.
There are flowers in her hair
& he has not kissed her mouth
just yet.

He leans over her, clearly wants her.
She is his, maybe.
Sitting in the chair opposite,
you only see a peacock raiment
& the eyes that look back at you
in flowers, whorls.

They are one body.
You cannot tell him from her
but it does not matter now.
Her eyes are shut & he is still
kissing her. They are like flowers.
Inseparable. The bed is a garden.

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The subject of dreams is a rich one. There is a vast catalogue of popular songs (“All I Have to Do Is Dream”, “Dream Baby”, et al) and poems (“Kubla Khan”, “Ode to a Nightingale” et al) that deal with various aspects of dream. Painters, too–Colville and the pre-Raphaelites, for instance– have explored dream-like states and fancies. Gustav Klimt’s work is largely dream made manifest, no moreso than, perhaps, “The Kiss”.

In stanza 2, I took the liberty of blending some other Klimt images into this particular scene, but with Klimt ‘it all runs together’, his dreamy scenes and dreamy people. There is, at last, a oneness, a confluence, and unity to his desires and obsessions (stanza 3). In many ways, Leonard Cohen’s beautiful poem “You Have the Lovers”–his best on love–is a poetic realization of Klimt’s vision. If one is looking for ultimate visual art and poetry examples of the love dream, these two works will always be key reference points and centres.

(quote by W.B.Yeats, “Two Songs from a Play”)

He is not a star for you to follow.
He is just a man walking away down the road,
the one who took the fire with him.
No. He is a son of God, a vast conception of self.
He is a wisp of air, a greatness of imagination.
He is true to his dream and will honour it forever.
There is a greatness to his style and gestures.
His arms reach out before him, to hold his dream again.
In that brief moment, he is crowned with stars
and lives in eternity’s sunrise.

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A Zen moment from 1990 AD. And though, one may achieve enough dreams to have the confidence to let this poem write itself (which it did), I will add that there will be ‘troughs’, hardship, setbacks, pain, etc. since all is process anyway. Still in all, to be briefly there at various times in one’s life…

Haven’t read this in some time, but it is a mish-mash of Yeats to begin with, with some Joseph Campbell perspectives on Buddha nature in man, Wallace Stevens (cf. my earlier poem-entry “The Waking Vision”), and Great Gatsby‘s ending filtered in.  For me, that is what the fullest achievement of dream feels/felt like. May you also be crowned with stars and live in eternity’s sunrise!

Close to ‘It’ on many daze
that elusive feeling
of sublime contentment.
The satisfaction of
knowing who I am
and what might really matter.

Much was precarious
and misfire, missed opportunity.
Close calls amid
the moments of being.

And all the while becoming.
Restless. Process.
Like a cold mountain stream.
The predestined collective impression
of all who knew me
along my vertiginous edges.

Realizing late
the slow climb
and precipitousness
of love–
the eternal assay.

Never rueing though,
just enjoying the heights
after all,
what it meant
to be so close, periodically
dissolved into something
or someone else.

It is there you will
finally find me
when recalling what it meant
to be who I really was.

Then you, too,
might come close,
be proximate your self.
Mirror-like.
Essence.

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Something resembling a summing-up in terms of many dreams. “It”–that elusive self-knowledge, ultimate truth, revelation, or epiphany. I’ve certainly reached stanza 1’s satisfaction with what self-knowledge and information about personal identity I have achieved. As well as a common sense awareness of things that do or don’t matter off the cuff.

Stanza 2–my list of misfires is a long one; everyone has such a list. I, fortunately, don’t have too many missed opportunities–in retrospect, having too many of those would have sucked! The many moments of being have luckily counterbalanced the close calls.

Stanza 3–becoming, what is probably the most interesting part of dreams–how they change/d us. The Process definitely is a restless one and, as the poem, indicates, a lifelong process or quest. To a large extent, others’ opinions or views of oneself fall into a collected collective and they will be what they will be apart from anything one could do or affect–i.e., are “predestined”. “Vertiginous edges”–well, there have been many and this always has kept life interesting. (One thing I have lately realized is how much people generally ‘push the envelope’ in just about any activity you might care to name. Human nature?)

Stanza 4–I feel life has been a slow steady climb (for me anyway)–the hard-earned quality of process and self-knowledge. Love gets in this stanza as it should and perhaps must. “The eternal assay”–assay as in attempt. Couldn’t have stated this better methinks.

Stanza 5–no, not much rueing given the heights, closeness, fullness, fruition, etc. The last two lines are adapted from a Willa Cather quote about the nature of greatness. Periodically was better than naught and worked in the long run.

Stanza 7–after reading this poem, you pretty much know who I am and was. As proximate as I got to various things discussed, maybe you did, too, vicariously, to me, and to a closer understanding of your quest, process and self. Your/The Essence of whoever/whatever.

Many poets and writers have speculated that life is largely but a dream or dream-like state. In The Tempest, Shakespeare writes “We are such stuff/As dreams are made on; and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.” We spend one-third of our days in sleep and the still relatively mysterious world of dreams. By day, we daydream, make plans, and imagine other possibilities and possible lives. Optimally, dreams might be thought of this way, in the words of Cheryl Renee Grossman, “I dream, therefore I become.”

What gives our lives meaning to a large extent are usually dreams. We have large dreams such as wanting to live independently, to own a house, to have a significant other, to create a family, to take a dream vacation, or to retire securely. These are more long-term and may require a significant investment of time, effort, patience, focus, and hard work. Often these involve personal sacrifice or compromises of some kind, but they are often the most satisfying and fulfilling of all realized dreams.

By day, there are often smaller, minor dreams and desires, such as having a morning coffee, having some pleasant engaging diversion during a work day, or coming home to a safe, known home-base that protects one from whatever harsh weather conditions. In the course of the day, a dream realized might include scoring an ‘A’ on a school test, getting an unexpected e-mail from an old friend, being promoted at work, or having a favorite food for supper. Ordinary or small victories are all dreams and desires realized that mean something positive for each dreamer.

More significantly, we may reach crossroads in our lives or perhaps look back on our pasts and wonder if we have accomplished various things we set out to do and once wanted to realize. It is as at those personal inventory moments that we may measure the relative success or failure of our lives. Usually, this is done in terms of dreams (and desires) achieved, deferred, or realized. Only each person can know what those dreams are and what they signified to oneself. It is in times such as these that we may come to know that the highest form of living and the best-lived moments are simply those many dreams we have been lucky to personally realize.

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(A fairly simple, obvious, basic view of dreams is the next in this continuing series of theme-meditations, now numbering lucky 13 since this blog began back in August. As before, several example or illustration selections/variations on the theme, follow. And for anyone seeking more coherence or a semblance of old-school linearity, this blog continues to be threaded ‘back to front’.)

“I dream, therefore I become” pretty much describes how life and love has unfolded for me, personally. Dreaming is about life and love possibilities and is also about the potential fruits of the imagination. Much of life resembles a dream and sometimes it is hard to separate the so-called real physical reality from dreams or imagination. (In many cases, the latter two exceed or are much better, truer, ‘realer’, and more beautiful than the other.)

As the second paragraph suggests, dreams and their achievement drive much of our daily and long-term activities. As the third paragraph says, dreams are uniformly positive in nature and flavour, and include ‘smaller’ or more obvious things we often take for granted. And I do strongly believe, as said in the fourth paragraph, that we measure the relative success or failure of our lives in terms of how actualized or realized our dreams are or become.

(left: Scamp–late 1950s; right: Pepper–1990s)

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.”–Tennyson, “Songs from The Princess”

There will come a time when the dog that loved you unconditionally, that followed you around, tail wagging, the one that you tried to lose or forget will have unknowingly become a part of your life.

And so it is that you will come home one day and the dog will be gone. It will be quite dead or have run away. Perhaps you will be the one to find it lying on the road…

And it may be necessary to bury the dog in the backyard or to take it to the vet who will put it away for you, to deal with the mess, so you can get on with your life.

And a part of you will end that day forever. and you will feel and hear the wind unlike before, late at night. And your bed will be empty, no one or nothing else in it, and you will remember the dog again…

And you shall be sorry that you ever cursed or tried to evade the dog. And you and your life will become much smaller even as the dog continues to grow in depth and memory.

And you shall come to rue the day you said “No’, the day you ever wished for the end of a season or a relationship. You will remember forever that day when you first drew back, that terrible day when you knew you could no longer match another’s affection, the innocent love of a too-loyal dog.

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Well…and then there are the larger, more personal missing pieces, absences, and departures. It goes without saying that pets play important roles in our lives; their presence, their love, their innocence are all too obvious, all too palpably experienced right down to death.

We all have to live with many burdens, many guilts and these fill our pasts, lives, and relationships–be they animal or human. I realized as I wrote this, that the latter two come down finally to really much the same thing. And these, in turn, become, perhaps, some of the largest missing pieces of all…

Can’t sleep–
long thin cloud
over Winnipeg
this morning

Lenny’s dead:
no five o’clock bells
or aficionados
weeping in the streets

just wind-rippled puddles
cathedral silence
& funeral-like cars
backed up for work
on Portage Ave

Soft flamenco strum
make a balm
of warm pure notes
for Lenny’s soul today
Tell God to be kind
to funny valentine men

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Note: “Five o’clock Bells” and “My Funny Valentine” are two of Lenny’s favorite and most played pieces. Lenny died suddenly one summer in the ’80s while I was in Winnipeg.

And then there are those large missing pieces like those of the famous, the great, and the geniuses. Legendary Winnipeg jazz guitarist Lenny Breau was never that famous but there is no denying his greatness and genius. I used to go see Lenny playing in the late ’60s before he left to record with Chet Atkins in Nashville. His road was a long tragic one after that (he became a serious drug addict and was eventually murdered) but he influenced jazz, jazz guitar playing, and even invented a 7 string guitar to play what he heard and wanted to play.

Lenny’s death left a great hole on the jazz and Winnipeg music scenes. Later in the ’90s, I would assist his daughter in writing a proposal which in turn led to a Bravo contract to do a much-belated, well-done tv documentary on her father. I have long been involved and affected by Lenny’s music, using it in my poetry readings and on a radio broadcast featuring my work. Some of the largest missing pieces then are those we feel close to, intuitively know, understand, and appreciate. And I think it is obvious that those significant pieces remain in our memories, experiences, and sensibilities forever.

lakes                                         breathing

secret night                              without wind

cold moon                                another wave by

forever we                                desire north

only fall                                     dim lost

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The sensation or ‘feeling’ of missing pieces. We constantly receive information from our context and/or nature. That information tells our inner being if we are out of sync, imbalanced, incomplete, unwhole, or missing something or someone.

I have read this poem many times in public. The sound and images come alive in performance, generate the effect or feeling I intended and wanted to communicate. I have begun a reading of this poem linearly from left to right, up and down, then relied on intuition and the moment to choose which path the reading would take as I read the poem several times. Yes, that was what I was after, wanted and needed to say: There is a restlessness, moodiness, spontaneity, and diaphanousness to the moment, to the feeling of missing pieces.

“I dwell in Possibility.”–Emily Dickinson, #657

“We make ourselves up as we go.”–Kate Green

Periodically, along the way in our lives, we become temporarily, sometimes permanently, aware of missing pieces. These moments of awareness of things and people missing in our lives haunts us from time to time, alternating teasing and frustrating us in our daily lives.

When we are young we first become conscious of missing pieces that we desire, these being typically external. On a basic level, we may lack healthy food, clean air or water. Perhaps we are born into a lower economic level with none of the toys and possessions that some of our friends have. Or that we may find ourselves in a single-parent situation, wondering why we don’t have a mother’s or father’s presence to complete our sense of what a family ought to be. As always with missing pieces, we believe that our lives will somehow be better if we have the particular absent thing or person.

Later in school, we may find ourselves wishing we could be or do better in certain school subjects or in athletics. Perhaps we long to be the star of the school play, the valedictorian, and so forth. For many teens, however, the main goal is an inner one of belonging, social acceptability, respect, and having friends outside of family. Unfortunately, those kids that are shy, handicapped, different, or from a very different culture may find themselves ‘on the outside’ of many of the social situations and approvals they long for, which, in turn, may become the missing pieces of their formative years.

In adulthood, the missing pieces might be such things as having a place to live independent of one’s parents, owning one’s own house, being married, having babies, raising a family of one’s own, or having a good-paying job with ample opportunities for both career advancement and job satisfaction. It is important to recognize that, by this stage in life, adult missing pieces often have to do with autonomy, relationships, success, and achievement.

Eventually, by mid-life, concerns tend to become more ‘inner’ once again. With age and aging, people typically become more aware of matters of the heart and soul that satisfy and sustain us in the midst of an oft-corresponding decline in mind, physical powers, and a lesser emphasis on materialism. It is at this stage that many become aware that there is more to life than making money, ambition, performance, and success in its more obvious external forms.

The missing pieces we ultimately crave then are usually about being understood, accepted, and appreciated for who and what we are. They are also about giving, loving, and sacrificing for others and those values and things we consider to be more personally meaningful and, obviously, deeply satisfying.

Life usually becomes more interesting and fun when we address our missing pieces. This process itself can lift us out of the worst depressions and doldrums. Acting on missing pieces usually requires boldness and confidence that one is doing something that is right and best for oneself (and perhaps others). Choice is not enough, though; one can, of course, simply wallow in mere desire and longing. The courage to be true to ourselves and to actualize ourselves is inevitably an individual transcendence of self, mere facts, and the limits of whatever contexts. What is required, ultimately, is a will to action, personal fulfillment, and self-completion.

“If it is to be, it is up to me.”–Shirley Hutton

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Missing pieces–o where to begin commentwise? The obvious ones tend to be external for most people much of the time. One wakes up in the early morning and realizes one is hungry and eats breakfast. Sometimes there is an element of conscious choice about even that, as in the thought “I haven’t had pancakes in a while.” or “What I’d really like is a kiwi to go with my toast.”, etc.

Or one is on holiday and sees a truly unique object that one would like to own, which one realizes is perhaps a ‘missing piece’, objectwise in one’s life. And thus likewise, we fill in our contexts, our home environments, with the various furnishings, decorations, knick-knacks, and apparel which constitute what we believe to be desirables, in and of themselves missing pieces. (This will be discussed in more detail in an upcoming piece on preferred images/imagery.)

But I think most of us would recognize larger missing pieces that have to do with certain people. A single may be well aware of having no child. An older orphaned adult may feel the absence of both parents. And, more commonly, an individual may feel the absence of a significant other and an intimate relationship with that missing piece, a missed or missing person.

Missing pieces, then, go well beyond external things or environments. They announce themselves to our consciousness and inner selves. Our inner beings may profoundly feel the lack of a significant connection in  which one is known to another as well as deeply knows another.